The present invention relates to RGB based LED luminary, and more particularly, to a method and system for controlling an RGB based LED luminary, in which the forward currents driving the LED luminary are adjusted in accordance to the difference in tristimulus values between the mixed output light of the luminary and a desired light so that the LED luminary generates the desired color and the lighting levels.
As well known in the art, Red, Green and Blue (RGB) LED based luminary is used for generating various colors of light included in the white light, which are widely used in applications such as LCD back lighting, commercial-freezer lighting, white light illumination, etc. The illumination by LED based luminaries presents difficult issues because the optical characteristics of the LEDs vary with temperature, forward current, and aging. In addition, the characteristics of the individual LEDs vary significantly batch-to-batch for the same LED fabrication process. Therefore, the quality of the light produced by the RGB based LED luminary can vary significantly and the desired color and the required lighting level of the white light can not be obtained without a suitable feedback system.
One known prior art system uses a lumen-feedbackxe2x80x94temperature-feed forward controlling system for controlling a white LED luminary to provide a constant color with fixed lumen output white light. The temperature-feed forward compensation system provides compensation for the variations in the color temperature due to the junction temperature and supplies the reference lumens. The lumen feedback controlling system regulates each RGB LED lumens to the reference lumens. This controlling system requires the characterization of LED with the temperature, which requires a costly factory calibration. In addition, it also requires switching-off the LED light sources briefly for light measurements. The switching-off of the LED light sources introduces a flicker phenomenon and thereby the power supplies must have fast response time. In addition, a PWM driving method is required to overcome the LED variations with forward current. With the PWM control, the implementation becomes complex and, in addition, the LEDs are not utilized to their full capacity.
Therefore, there exists a need in the art of a less-costly controlling system for controlling the RGB based LED luminaries without the above problems in the prior art.
The present invention discloses a novel controlling method as well as a system for controlling a RGB based LED luminary, which compares the feedback tristimulus values representative of the mixed output light of the RGB based LED luminary with the referenced tristimulus values representative of the desired light, and adjusts the forward currents of the LED luminary in such a way that the difference in tristimulus values is decreased to zero.
Particularly, the controlling system comprises a feedback unit including photodiodes for generating the feedback tristimulus values of the LED luminary, and a controller for acquiring the difference between the feedback tristimulus values and the desired reference tristimulus values, and generating control voltages for adjusting the forward currents of the LED luminary so that the difference in tristimulus values is decreased to zero.
The tristimulus values under comparison may be either under CIE 1931 tristimulus system or under a new RGB calorimetric system, but in either case the controlling of the luminary tracks the reference tri-stimulus values. Thus, under a steady-state where the feedback tristimulus values follow the desired reference tristimulus values, the light produced by the LED luminary has the desired target color temperature and the lumen output, which are regulated precisely to the targets regardless of the variations in the junction temperature, forward current and aging of the LEDs.
Since the tri-stimulus values of the mixed light are measured for the control, the controlling method of the present invention does not require a factory calibration for obtaining the temperature related characteristics of the LEDs. In addition, it overcomes the batch-to-batch variations in the LEDs, which can lead to significant cost reduction due to the use of any LEDs in a batch.
Since only the mixed light is measured by the photodiodes regardless of the individual components of the Red, Green and Blue LED light sources, this scheme does not require switching-off the power supplies for light measurement. Therefore, the power supply does not need fast transient response. In addition, the limit on the ripple in the LED drive can be larger due to the fact that the LED tolerates higher ripples and the higher ripple does not affect the performance of the system. These factors contribute for cost savings on the power supplies.